"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau, most closely associated with scene-stealing character turns in such films as “North by Northwest,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Ed Wood” as well as the classic TV series “Mission: Impossible,” died Saturday in Los Angeles, according to his publicist. He had been hospitalized at UCLA where he experienced complications. He was 89.The lanky, offbeat-looking veteran of the Actors Studio, for he which he was currently West Coast co-artistic director, had many ups and downs in his career. His greatest successes (three Oscar nominations and one win) came later in life when he returned to character roles like the one that first won him notice, as James Mason’s sinister gay henchman in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”He was Emmy-nominated five times, and most of his leading man roles came on television, most notably as Rollin Hand, a master of disguise on “Mission: Impossible.” He later spent a couple of years starring in syndicated sci-fi series “Space: 1999,” on which, as with “Mission: Impossible,” he co-starred with then-wife Barbara Bain.After a dry spell, his career roared back to life in the late 1980s when Francis Ford Coppola cast him in “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” which brought Landau the first of three supporting noms. It was, he reminded one journalist, the first time this “Jewish kid from Brooklyn” took a role that called for him to play Jewish.An even more impressive turn as a successful Jewish ophthalmologist haunted by a secret in Woody Allen’s drama “Crimes and Misdemeanors” brought him an Oscar nomination for the second year in a row.In 1994 came the part of a lifetime for a character actor, the dying, once-famous screen ghoul Bela Lugosi, in Tim Burton’s whacked-out “Ed Wood.” Landau won the supporting actor Oscar.Landau made his first bigscreen impression in Alfred Hitchcock’s action suspenser “North by Northwest,” playing the villain who does Mason’s dirty work. The role led to a major supporting role in the epic “Cleopatra,” on which Landau spent a year, only to find most of his role as General Rufio on the cutting-room floor. “What could I do?” he later lamented. “They couldn’t cut Richard Burton or Elizabeth Taylor.”During the 1960s he had character roles in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Nevada Smith” and “The Hallelujah Trail.”Landau had been doing television work since the 1950s but got busy in TV in the mid-’60s, with several guest appearances on sci-fier “The Outer Limits” and spy skein “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” He was producer Gene Roddenberry’s first choice for the role of Spock on “Star Trek,” but the role wound up going to Leonard Nimoy after Landau opted for “Mission: Impossible.” (Nimoy would later take a recurring role on “Mission: Impossible.”)On the enormously successful “Mission: Impossible,” Landau and Bain played well off one another and with the rest of the regular ensemble, which included Peter Graves. Landau stayed with the series for three years, through 1969, drawing Emmy nominations three years in a row. He said his reason for leaving (and Bain’s as well) was artistic differences over the general direction of the show, though others claim salary demands were the real problem.However, roles in “A Town Called Hell,” “Operation Snafu” and another villain role in “They Call Me Mister Tibbs” didn’t result in major acclaim.Television came to the rescue again with the two-year run of “Space: 1999” in the mid-’70s. Numerous TV movie turns reached a nadir with “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” in 1981.He and Bain divorced, and Landau spent the ’80s in roles in mostly obscure films. He also worked as an acting teacher.After the successes of “Tucker,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Ed Wood,” Landau had a steady stream of mostly supporting work on the bigscreen from the mid-’90s through the late 2000s.He brought poignancy to his role as a judge in “City Hall” and played Gepetto in “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” He contributed a memorable turn to “The X-Files” movie in 1998, worked for Burton again in “Sleepy Hollow” and took roles in “Rounders,” “The Majestic” and “Hollywood Homicide.”He had a series of roles in small films including 2006’s “David and Fatima” and starred in 2008’s “Harrison Montgomery.”There was also higher-profile work: Landau starred with Judy Parfitt in 2004 Holocaust drama “The Aryan Couple.” He also had a role in “City of Ember” and did voicework for the 2009 animated feature “9” and 2012’s “Frankenweenie.”Landau provided voices for the 1997 Oscar-winning documentary “The Long Way Home” and appeared as himself in the docus “Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s,” “Cannes: Through the Eyes of the Hunter” and “Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There” (2003) as well as a 2011 “American Masters” documentary on Woody Allen.He kept his hand in on the smallscreen as well, starring in the miniseries “Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story” and appearing as a series regular on the brief ABC series “The Evidence.” He recurring notably on “Without a Trace” as Anthony LaPaglia’s father with Alzheimer’s and on “Entourage” as a washed-up producer, drawing Emmy nominations in 2004 and 2005 for the former and in 2007 for the latter. Most recently he appeared in “The Last Poker Game” with Paul Sorvino, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, and in “Remember” for director Atom Egoyan.Also in the 2000s, Landau worked as an acting coach in a venture with director Mark Rydell and screenwriter-playwriter Lyle Kessler.The Brooklynite started out as a cartoonist, spending four years with the New York Daily News from 1948-51, then turned his attentions to acting. He claimed that he and Steve McQueen were the only two among 2,000 applicants whose auditions gained them admittance to the Actors Studio (of which Landau later became an officer).Landau did some stage work, most notably touring with the Paddy Chayefsky play “Middle of the Night” in 1956-57. He married one of the understudies, Bain, whom he met in Curt Conway’s acting classes.His film debut came in a small role in “Pork Chop Hill” in 1959, followed by a larger role in “The Gazebo.” Then he drew attention for his role in “North by Northwest.”He is survived by two daughters, writer-producer-casting director Susan Landau Finch and Juliet Landau of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame, a sister and a granddaughter.Donations may be made to Actors Studio West, Attn: Helen Sanders, 8341 DeLongpre Ave., West Hollywood, Calif. 90069.

George A. Romero, who launched the zombie film genre with his 1968 “Night of the Living Dead,” died on Sunday, Variety has confirmed. He was 77.The director died in his sleep following a battle with lung cancer, according to a statement from his manager Chris Roe.“Legendary filmmaker George A. Romero passed away on Sunday July 16, listening to the score of ‘The Quiet Man,’ one of his all-time favorite films, with his wife, Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and daughter, Tina Romero at his side,” the statement said. “He died peacefully in his sleep, following a brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer, and leaves behind a loving family, many friends, and a filmmaking legacy that has endured, and will continue to endure, the test of time.”Made in Pittsburgh on a budget of $114,000, “Night of the Living Dead” made $30 million and became a cult classic. Romero’s friends and associates in his Image Ten production company pooled their funds to make the film. Influenced by Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend,” the black and white film about a group of people trapped in a Pennsylvania farmhouse who fall prey to a horde of the undead was said to be a critique of capitalism during the counter-culture era.After “Night of the Living Dead,” he directed films including “There’s Always Vanilla,” “Season of the Witch,” and “The Crazies,” although none had the impact of his first film. His 1977 vampire arthouse pic “Martin” was somewhat more well-received.He went back to zombies with “Dawn of the Dead,” which made more than $55 million on a half a million dollar budget, then made his third Dead movie with “Day of the Dead” in 1985.His non-zombie films of that period gained more attention, including “Knightridgers” about jousters who re-enact tournaments on motorcycles and the anthology “Creepshow” written by Stephen King.Among his other films from the 1980s and 1990s were “Monkey Shines,” Edgar Allen Poe adaptation “Two Evil Eyes,” in collaboration with Dario Argento, “The Dark Half’ and “Bruiser.”He exec produced and updated his own screenplay for Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead.” He made a cameo appearance in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Romero was originally set to direct “Resident Evil,” but left the project due to creative differences.His fourth Dead movie “Land of the Dead” was made in Toronto in 2005, starring Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento and John Leguizamo.He followed that with “Diary of the Dead” in 2008 and “Survival of the Dead” in 2010. He also worked on video games and wrote comic books.Born in the Bronx, Romero’s father was Cuban and his mother Lithuanian. He graduated the Carnegie Institute of University in Pittsburgh, then began shooting shorts and commercials, including a segment of “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.”He is survived by his wife Suzanne, a daughter, and two sons.

Grant Bisbee is my hero, although the booger-pickin' kid from Pittsburgh would have beat him out if he had wiped it on his sister's sleeve.Mr. Bisbee has cut through all the crap and discovered that the real culprit in the demise of America's Pastime is...baseball itself! Yep, it was and is a suicide.Thank you, Grant. All true fans salute you.

On April 13, 1984, the Mets played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. The home team won, 11-2. Both teams combined to throw 270 pitches. Both teams combined to allow 27 baserunners, and 74 batters came to the plate. There was exactly one mid-inning pitching change.On April 17, 2014, the Brewers played the Pirates at PNC Park. The home team won, 11-2. Both teams combined to throw 268 pitches. Both teams combined to allow 27 baserunners, and 75 batters came to the plate. There was exactly one mid-inning pitching change.The game from 1984 lasted two hours and 31 minutes.The game from 2014 lasted three hours and six minutes.Our goal is to figure out where the extra 35 minutes came from.

This isn’t a perfect, peer-reviewed experiment. It will not prove anything definitively. No two games are ever the same, of course, with different hiccups and quirks mixed between the balls and strikes. Just because the games are nearly identical, that doesn’t mean this is an unimpeachable answer as to why baseball games are longer.But as many of the variables were eliminated as possible. Even though the best source for vintage baseball games was eliminated by copyright ninjas, I still found a full game from 1984 with commercials on YouTube. The MLB.tv game from 2014 didn’t have the original commercials, but it did have the same timing of the original commercial breaks.Why are modern baseball games so much longer? Is it because of extra commercials? Batters fidgeting with their batting gloves? On-field delays? Slow home-run trots? It has to be the commercials, right?We aim to find out, and we’ll go inning-by-inning. (You can skip to the end for the conclusion, but you’ll miss old commercials, Harry Caray quotes, and a picture of a kid picking his nose.)

First inning

The first thing we need to do is get the ol’ ballgame up on the Smart Set.Steve Trout starts for the Cubs, and he’s facing a 19-year-old Dwight Gooden, who’s making his second career start. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten a ballgame this interesting if it wasn’t for the Smart Set picking it out.Over in the game from 2014, there is not a 19-year-old Dwight Gooden. There is Edinson Volquez and Yovani Gallardo. Adjust your expectations accordingly.The announcers for Cubs/Mets are Harry Caray and Steve Stone. Let’s check in with Stone as he describes Gooden:

STONE: (Gooden) reminds me of a Bob Gibson, but he has better control.

That’s something we would have joked about on Twitter on for an entire day, except he wasn’t wrong! Gooden was brilliant before the innings caught up to him, and there might not be a better example of bottled lightning in baseball history. He did have superior control to Gibson at the same age, and he was an instant demigod, the platonic ideal of what a pitcher should be.Let’s check in with Harry Caray in the first inning:

CARAY: By the way, Gary Matthews and his family are looking for a two- or three-bedroom apartment, preferably in a high-rise. Anybody who’s interested in renting their apartment or home, please contact the Cubs’ public relations office at 281-6955.

If you rent your apartment to Gary Matthews, he’ll leave you some free passes to the game now and then.

This probably still applies, so maybe everyone reading this should call the Cubs’ PR and let them know about Craigslist, just in case he’s still looking.Trout sets the Mets down quietly in the first inning of the 1984 game, but Gooden gives up a run on a double and a single.Volquez gives up a two-out RBI single in the first inning of the 2014 game, and Gallardo allows a long, gorgeous home run to Andrew McCutchen, who makes baseball better when he’s at his best. Make baseball better again, Andrew McCutchen.Final tally:

1st Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

40

36

Combined pitches (game)

40

36

Batters faced (game)

9

11

Runs scored (game)

1

3

Commercial time (game)

4m 29s

4m 37s

Time of inning

17m 9s

21m 52s

Time of game

21m 38s

26m 29s

Meanwhile, in PittsburghHa ha, that rascal. It’s a good lesson, though. When life gives you "my legacy is tethered to that time I committed an unusual, horrific assault," make "my legacy is tethered to that time I committed an unusual, horrific assault"-ade!

Second inning

A relatively quiet inning, with neither team scoring.I guess if we’re going to pass the time, let’s listen to some more Harry Caray. Oh, he has someone in the booth with him!

CARAY: HEY, LISTEN, never mind that sweet talk. Bobby … Uncle Bobby Collins, with his arm around Denise Cannon, first, awbdwirrbl, to heck with you, Bobby, I want to talk to Denise.

POOR DENISE: Alright, hi, Harry!

CARAY: Is the (Cubs’ home) opener the lead story on the 9:00 news?

POOR DENISE: Well, it certainly should be, it’s an exciting day, and the weather permitted us to be here.

CARAY: Grmdrmuorplm, did you have anything to do with the other pretty girls the Cubs hired here?

Good work, ‘80s.Also, it’s really, really, REALLY hard not to imagine Will Ferrell saying all of this.

2nd Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

21

24

Combined pitches (game)

61

60

Batters faced (game)

16

15

Runs scored (game)

1

3

Commercial time (game)

8m 52s

9m 22s

Time of inning

8m 15s

11m 3s

Time of game

34m 16s

42m 17s

Third inning

The Brewers had a little action, getting a Ryan Braun double and a Jonathan Lucroy single, reminding us that, good gravy, they used to be a very talented team with exceptional players.Other than that, though, both innings are quiet.Let’s check back in with Harry Caray:

CARAY: Here’s our new camera position, it can show you the keister of John Vukovich quite often.

CARAY: You sure get some good shots, Artie.

This actually happened in the first inning, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you.

3rd Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

24

35

Combined pitches (game)

85

95

Batters faced (game)

23

28

Runs scored (game)

1

4

Commercial time (game)

13m 16s

14m 21s

Time of inning

10m 3s

19m 10s

Time of game

48m 44s

1h 6m 25s

Fourth inning

The fourth inning is quiet in Pittsburgh, but it’s when the Mets light themselves on fire.To be fair to Doc Gooden, there were a couple of hard-luck hits, and there were also a couple of questionable calls, including on a pitch that could have been a strike three and changed the whole inning. Considering that Gooden went 16-8 with a 2.40 ERA after this game, allowing a .538 OPS and striking out 267, I’m taking his side.The Cubs keep hitting and hitting in this inning, with walks and singles, and a pitcher reaching on a hilarious bunt, and more singles. Gooden is removed from the game mid-inning, and there are step-offs, mound visits, pickoff throws, stolen bases, and caught-stealings. There are even boos for Leon Durham, who as far as I can tell committed the sin of being very good for the Cubs for years.If this game happened in 2014, it would have taken four hours. As is …

4th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

56

31

Combined pitches (game)

141

126

Batters faced (game)

35

36

Runs scored (game)

6

4

Commercial time (game)

16m 52s

18m 42s

Time of inning

32m 39s

15m 13s

Time of game

1h 24m 59s

1h 25m 58s

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh …His eyes are blurred out because I didn’t want to take the .001-percent chance that a throwaway joke in a dumb baseball article would ruin his life, but this kid is a hero.

Fifth inning

The Cubs score a run, and neither of the other three teams do. This is important because it reminds us all that tedious innings weren’t invented in 2010. The Cubs scored their run on a quick Ron Cey homer — dude literally runs like a penguin, I thought that was some sort of obscure nickname — and their inning still took forever.This is a reminder that there’s some boring that’s always folded into baseball, and it will never be taken out completely. There were boring innings when the games were 2½ hours, too.

5th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

34

25

Combined pitches (game)

175

151

Batters faced (game)

44

43

Runs scored (game)

7

4

Commercial time (game)

21m 11s

23m 28s

Time of inning

12m 47s

10m 43s

Time of game

1h 42m 5s

1h 41m 28s

Meanwhile in Chicago:

STEVE STONE: Looks like that’s a great way to pick up radio signals.

STEVE STONE, BREAKING AN AWKWARD SILENCE, UNABLE TO CONTROL HIMSELF: Hard to eat peanuts with that thing, though.

Maybe we should just pass a law that television broadcasts shouldn’t show kids in the stands.

Sixth inning

Leon Durham hit a triple to shut up the booing Cubs fans, and I sent some cheers back through time to support him.Other than that, not much is going on. You’ll notice that the Brewers and Pirates are tied at 2-2, yet they’re nearly 17 minutes past the Cubs, who are leading 8-0 and had some long, long innings. This is because baseball games are too damned long now. We have conclusions below!Milo Hamilton is in the booth for Harry Caray, who’s doing radio for the middle innings. Let’s check in with Milo:

HAMILTON: The Cubs are pleasing themselves and their fans this inning!

Well, alright.

6th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

27

30

Combined pitches (game)

202

181

Batters faced (game)

52

50

Runs scored (game)

8

4

Commercial time (game)

25m 32s

28m 9s

Time of inning

9m 22s

16m 8s

Time of game

1h 55m 48s

2h 2m 17s

Seventh inning

In the Brewers-Pirates game, we have our first umpire review. I regret to inform you that it takes forever, just a little over four minutes. Considering that baseball is limiting reviews to two minutes now, feel free to lop two minutes off the 2014 game in this exercise.However, that doesn’t explain everything. This inning also included …

Eight pickoff attempts

A batter stepping out because the pitcher was taking too long

A mound conference

A stolen base and an error on the throw

The pickoff attempts were lustily booed in the grandest of baseball traditions, and the Pirates end up scoring three runs. They were not a quick three runs.The Cubs and Mets trade homers in their game, and it’s worth noting that home run trots took just as long then as they do now. They didn’t run around the bases like jackalopes back in the ‘80s, hoping to keep the spirit of unwritten rules. They took their sweet time, just like today.I know, I’m disappointed, too.

7th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

35

40

Combined pitches (game)

237

221

Batters faced (game)

62

60

Runs scored (game)

12

7

Commercial time (game)

29m 30s

36m 30s

Time of inning

14m 16s

26m 24s

Time of game

2h 14m 2s

2h 37m 3s

Eighth inning

This was the big inning for the Pirates, the one where they scored six runs and broke the game open. There was a mound conference that took a healthy chunk of time, and Wei-Chung Wang looked like a Rule 5 pitcher who hadn’t pitched above Class A before the season and was left out to dry. Which he was.This fits in perfectly for our comparison, though, as there are no mid-inning pitching changes in the inning. The 2014 game isn’t taking forever because of lefty-righty matchups. The managers in both games let their relievers take their lumps. Cross one theory off the list, at least for this game.In the bottom of the eighth inning of the Cubs-Mets game, Jose Oquendo hurts his hand in the field. As the trainer helps him off, Steve Stone has thoughts:

STONE: This is a horrible blow for the Mets. Oquendo … is like Ozzie Smith with a better arm.

Now I don’t feel so bad about laughing at the Gibson/Gooden comparison earlier.While it would have been even better if all four teams scored all of their runs in the same inning, for science, we’ll just have to deal with the Cubs having their big inning early and the Pirates having their big inning late.

8th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

18

39

Combined pitches (game)

255

260

Batters faced (game)

69

72

Runs scored (game)

13

13

Commercial time (game)

33m 13s

42m 36s

Time of inning

6m 42s

20m 45s

Time of game

2h 24m 26s

3h 3m 53s

Ninth inning

The Brewers were very, very committed to getting back to the hotel room, and I commend them for that. Eight pitches, six swings. This is how every 11-2 game should be in the ninth inning, with the trailing team actually trying to complete the comeback and playing normal baseball if they accidentally get, like, five hits in a row.It still wasn’t enough to let the 1984 game catch up to the 2014 game. It wasn’t even close.

9th Inning

1984

2014

Combined pitches (inning)

14

8

Combined pitches (game)

269

268

Batters faced (game)

74

75

Runs scored (game)

13

13

Commercial time (game)

33m 13s

42m 36s

Time of inning

5m 46s

3m 37s

Time of game

2h 30m 12s

3h 7m 17s

Conclusions

What did we learn?

Every man in Chicago is issued a tan trench coat or overcoat when he turns 30, and it is permanently attached to their upper torso. They are eventually buried in it.

Milwaukee telecasts have a "Tavern of the Game" that are sponsored by the Tavern League of Wisconsin.

Before Craigslist, announcers had to find apartments for new players in addition to their regular duties.

These are the most important takeaways, but you might be interested in the ones about the time of game.Commercials aren’t the primary villain. They don’t help the pace of the modern game, but I figured that was going to be the half-hour difference right there, and the conclusion would be simple. But the 1984 game had 33 minutes and 13 seconds of commercials, and the 2014 game had 42 minutes and 36 seconds. Considering the times of the respective games, the older game actually devoted a similar chunk of their broadcast to time away from the action.There’s a little bit of an asterisk here, though, as I’m defining "commercial" as the time that runs from the beginning of a commercial break to the first pitch of the next inning. If we’re talking about actual BUY GEICO, YOU MEATY ROBOTS time, the 1984 game featured 19 minutes and 17 seconds of actual ads, whereas the 2014 game had 28 minutes and 25 seconds.Here's another asterisk: There was a mid-inning pitching change in both games, but only the 2014 game cut to a commercial. That's right: for nearly three minutes in 1984, the cameras just hung around, watching a dude warm up, as announcers talked about nothing and the network threw money out the window. It was somewhere between maddening and refreshing. So if you want to count that as a 1984 commercial, the gap shrinks even more.Still, the 1984 game took a much longer time coming back from break to get the game started, which means that the players were mostly hanging around on the field, not playing baseball, roughly the same in both eras. They just got better at stuffing more ads in the telecast. It’s possible that this is a quirk of WGN, and that they wanted to make sure all of the different randos cycling through the booth had time to chat with Harry Caray before the first pitch.Time between pitches is the primary villain. I tallied up all the pitches in both games that we’ll call inaction pitches — pitches that resulted in a ball, called strike, or swinging strike, but didn’t result in the end of an at-bat or the advancement of a runner. These are the pitches where the catcher caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, whose next step was to throw it back to the catcher. Foul balls didn’t count. The fourth ball of a plate appearance didn’t count. Stolen bases didn’t count. Wild pitches didn’t count. Just the pitches where contact wasn’t made, and the pitcher received a return throw from the catcher.There were 146 inaction pitches in the 1984 game.There were 144 of these pitches in the 2014 game.The total time for the inaction pitches in 1984 — the elapsed time between a pitcher releasing one pitch and his release of the next pitch — was 32 minutes and 47 seconds.The total time for inaction pitches in 2014 was 57 minutes and 41 seconds.This is how a game can have an almost identical number of pitches thrown, batters faced, baserunners, hits, walks, strikeouts, and runs scored compared to another game, yet take more than a half-hour longer. This, plus the modest difference in commercial breaks, explains nearly everything. It took nine seconds longer for a pitcher to get rid of the ball in 2014.In the 1984 game, there were 70 inaction pitches that were returned to the pitcher and thrown back to the plate within 15 seconds.In the 2014 game, there were 10.In the 1984 game, there were 32 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches.In 2014, there were 87 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches.That’s it. That’s the secret. It isn’t just the commercials. It isn’t just the left-handed pitchers coming in to face one batter, even though that absolutely makes a huge difference in the games when that does happen.It’s not like every at-bat in the 2014 game was rotten with hitters doing a Nomar Garciaparra impression between pitches, either. It was a marked difference in the modern players doing absolutely nothing of note. The batter taking an extra breath before he steps back in. The pitcher holding the ball for an extra beat.There was a video review that took four minutes in the 2014 game, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. There were extra commercials, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. The difference between the two games, 30 years apart, was that baseball players are lollygagging more. Or, at least, taking their sweet time to collect their thoughts.The good news? There’s an easy fix. Baseball is already experimenting with pitch clocks in the minors, and I haven’t heard or read a complaint about them from anyone who regularly attends minor league games. They’re in the background. You get used to them. That’s it.Baseball will keep trying different ideas, from limiting pickoff throws to limiting mound visits. They’ve already messed with intentional walks, and umpire reviews are going to be less accurate but shorter. The 2014 game didn’t feature the new rules preventing hitters from stepping entirely out of the batter’s box on inaction pitches, which has already helped a bit.Based on one unscientific deep dive into a pair of similar games, though, the biggest problem with the pace of play is, well, the pace of play. Pitchers don’t get rid of the ball like they used to. Hitters aren’t expecting them to get rid of the ball like they used to. It adds a couple minutes to every half-inning, which adds close to a half-hour.Fix that, and you have a head start on what Major League Baseball believes is its biggest problem.Now if you’ll excuse me, my Smart Set is telling me that the Olympics are coming on soon.I can’t wait.

Many thanks toSteve Czaban, the only sports talk host who matters, for the heads up.

Born in 1949, Ryszard Legutko spent the first four decades of his life in communist-controlled Poland. Like many, he came to idealize the freedom and political structure of liberal democratic societies, particularly the United States. Following the collapse of communism in 1989 and Poland’s democratic transition, he experienced disillusionment as political problems persisted.Today, Legutko is a professor of philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and he has been a member of the European Parliament since 2014. He is the author of several books, including The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (Encounter, 2016).Columbia editor Alton J. Pelowski recently had the opportunity to talk to Legutko about his book and about the role of faith in the public square today.COLUMBIA: Thomas Jefferson spoke of “a wall of separation between church and state.” Many people in the United States have taken this to mean that a person’s personal faith does not belong in the public square. What is your opinion about the proper role that religion should play in the political sphere?PROF. RYSZARD LEGUTKO: The effect of the Reformation in Europe was that religion was under the control of the throne, whereas in the United States there is this separation. Until recently, this was widely believed to mean only that there is no established religion. The idea that religion has no access to the public square is a recent phenomenon.From the beginning, it was assumed that the United States was founded on Christian principles and that people who are elected to the public functions are religious people, sometimes with very strong religious views, and that these views affect their political opinion. It’s not that religious truth is to be translated literally into policy, but it has a role to play. If you are a Christian, you cannot totally abstract your religious views from your public life. That’s why the Bible is considered to be a sacred document in courts, such as for swearing oaths. Only recently has this been seriously contested, with calls for the removal of crosses and of the Ten Commandments, for example.My opinion is a simple one: You cannot just distill or separate politics from your religious or philosophical views, in an effort to create a “pure” politics, deprived of metaphysical content. It’s simply impossible; such human beings do not exist.COLUMBIA: How are we to understand the marginalization of Christianity when secular culture espouses the importance of tolerance?LEGUTKO: What we see nowadays, not only in the United States but also here in Europe, is that a certain type of ideology is considered to be no ideology at all. It is seen as civil neutrality, which is a version of liberalism. If you identify as a liberal, you imply that you are neutral, that you are free from metaphysical or religious presuppositions. This is untrue, of course. Liberalism is a very philosophically loaded point of view, and there’s a whole package that you put into the public square.With respect to abortion, for example, what liberals today have tried to do is make people believe that an objection to abortion is a religious issue — that the civilly neutral position is to make abortion legal. But it’s not simply a religious issue; it’s primarily an anthropological and philosophical one.Christians, particularly Catholics, traditionally have a non-liberal and non-democratic concept of human nature. The human being is defined metaphysically, not merely in terms of utility or as a creature that seeks pleasure and avoids suffering.Christianity places one in contact with the breadth of the Western cultural and philosophical traditions. What I call “politically imposed amnesia” is the tendency to get rid of the perceived burden of Western culture.In all of this, we must depend on the culture of civility. That is, I know what you are and you know what I am, and we can somehow come to a political compromise. But do not make the assumption that you can put forward everything that you stand for if you do not allow me to do the same.COLUMBIA: In your book The Demon in Democracy, you make the bold claim that, despite their great differences, liberal democracy and communism retain important similarities. What are these similarities?LEGUTKO: I try to be more specific in the book and enumerate various levels of similarities, but generally I would say that what makes these two systems similar is that both liberal democrats and the communists politicized the entirety of social, individual and communal life. The communists believed the entire social life, even the arts and philosophy, should be permeated by the spirit of communism. The liberal democrats do exactly the same. That is, they believe that everything in the liberal democratic society should be liberal democratic.This aggressive attitude aims to imbue the entire human existence with one set of ideas. In both cases, it implies that you must cut off human heritage and everything that came before in the realm of ideas. Forget about the philosophers and thinkers of antiquity; the less you know about them the better, because they contaminate your mind with the incorrect ideas.During the last decades, deliberate policies of governments and institutions have also dismantled and redefined the family in order to create a new type of society — a new man. This, too, is something that reminds us of the communist regime. To establish a new communist society, the family was the first object of attack.

COLUMBIA: In The Republic, Plato warned that democracy can degenerate into “tyranny.” Much later, in Democracy in America, Tocqueville talked about the rise of “democratic despotism.” More recently, in Centesimus Annus, John Paul II argued that a democracy without values can become a kind of “totalitarianism.” Are these different ways of expressing a similar argument?LEGUTKO: Yes and no. These are different thinkers, but for each of them democracy was problematic. Democracy was not something ultimate that should provide the platform to evaluate everything else. Rather, it’s the other way around — that is, you should identify some timeless or more reliable criteria and then try to evaluate every political system, including democracy. Democracy can give people an excessive sense of certainty and confidence. If the enlightened majority agrees on something, then it must be true. If something is accepted as obvious to everyone around you, then you just believe it and stop questioning things.Alexis de Tocqueville observed that in American society people like general concepts such as “freedom,” “equality” and “justice,” but these lose their strength when they are not grounded in tradition. So, we use these concepts very often, but we no longer ask what we mean by them as we adapt them to changing needs and circumstances.In Plato’s Dialogues, the initial impulse of Socrates was to elucidate the meaning of the general concepts that are largely used in democracy. He analyzed these concepts and tried to find a definition.For example, everybody talks about freedom. “I stand for freedom, and you are the enemy of freedom.” The word “freedom” has a positive connotation, but we no longer understand what we are talking about. Only when we discover what words mean will our debates make any sense.In this context, we can observe how language has deteriorated in recent decades. It’s no longer a tool for communication, but rather a weapon with which you wage war against your adversaries.COLUMBIA: Both John Paul II and Pope Benedict spoke about the role of Poland in preserving the Christian identity of Europe and re-evangelizing the West. Is it true that Christian identity has been preserved here in a particular way?LEGUTKO: The more time I spend in the European Union, the more truth I see in these statements. Poland is practically the only Christian country left in Europe. In places like Spain, for example, there are almost no new vocations and very strong anti-Christian sentiments.I don’t know how many Poles are aware of it, but we are nearly the last vestige of Christianity of Europe. In Poland, about half the Christians, mostly Catholics, are still regular churchgoers, and we are Europe’s main exporter of Catholic priests.But it is in the nature of democracy to become like everyone else; if you are an exception, there must be something wrong with you. Some think there must be something wrong with Polish society if there are so many Polish Catholics and the churches are full. No, there is something wrong with the countries in which the churches are empty.COLUMBIA: You’ve spoken on behalf of the persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East. What in your opinion should be done in the West to aid Christians and other minority groups who are targeted for genocide?LEGUTKO: Christians are suffering persecution in the Middle East and elsewhere — such as in North Korea and places in Africa — yet there is also discrimination of Christians in Europe, and these two things are somehow correlated. European politicians are very reluctant to talk about the persecution of Christians. When they do, they use abstract terms like “freedom of religion.” They evade the issue when they use this weak language. They should be defending Christians as Christians in the same way as the Israelis defend Jews as Jews, not because it contradicts the abstract idea of nondiscrimination.These same politicians don’t escape into this neutral, abstract language when defending homosexuals, for instance. Almost every document that comes out of the European Parliament contains clauses where the rights of LGBT people are stated explicitly. You never find such language in defense of Christians. If we Westerners do not defend Christianity, nobody will, but we are somehow reluctant or unable to do so.There are many things that can be done to help ensure that the Middle East is not further de-Christianized. There were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, and now it’s around 200,000. This is not only about Christianity but about the presence of Western civilization in the Middle East. This is also about peace. Christians were the people who stood for peace there. Now, with them nearly gone, you have what is taking place today.Here's some more food for thought, kiddies...

Shortly after the collapse of Communism, the Nobel-winning novelist Doris Lessing took to the pages of the New York Times to warn that “while we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives.” She had been a Communist in her youth, and from that experience she learned how the ideology “debased language and, with language, thought.” Lessing was more prescient than she knew. Even as Communist political correctness was thrown back on its heels for a time in the former Soviet empire, it was defying gravity in Europe and America. Indeed, in the United States, our constitutional republic based on limited government had already begun to give way to an expansive bureaucratic liberal regime built on court-constructed interest-group “rights.”Ryszard Legutko, who had been a member of the Solidarity movement that fought to free Poland from Communism at the beginning of the 1980s, is now professor of philosophy at Jagellonian University in Krakow. He lives in a post-Communist nation fighting to free itself of the European Union’s smog of political correctness. With Poland’s entry into the European Union, he argues, his countrymen “have escaped one Master only to be bullied by a new” set of unelected rulers who have created “a system almost as surreal as under Communism.” The unelected but enlightened despots of the European Union seem no more willing to question their assumptions than the Politburo: “The characteristic feature of both societies—communist and liberal democratic—was that a lot things simply could not be discussed.”Legutko grew up in a world in which Stalin propagated the concept of an “enemy of the people.” An individual so labeled need not be argued with because, by definition, they were not just mistaken but evil. Under this forerunner of contemporary identity politics, guilt and innocence required no evidentiary inquiry. They are a matter of supporting or opposing the party line, that is, the politically correct view of a matter.Like the Communists at the peak of their power, the Eurocrats see themselves as representing the pinnacle of human achievement, worthy of emulation around the globe. But after Poland’s liberation from Communism, “very quickly the world became hidden under a new ideological shell and the people become hostage” to “another version of [Orwellian] newspeak with similar ideological mystifications.”Legutko has taken the measure of the West that Poland once pined for, and this is what he finds: “Literary critics, artists, writers, performers, and theater directors imagine themselves to be listening to the voices of the excluded and searching for the deep roots of domination; anthropologists, social scientists, journalists, and celebrities are pre-occupied with pretty much the same.”Like Communism, the democratic culture of the present day “produces large numbers of lumpen-intellectuals.” There is no shortage of people who ecstatically become involved in tracking disloyalty and fostering a new orthodoxy in which accusation replaces argument. And as under Communism, America’s social-justice warriors, particularly on campuses, are relentlessly in search of “casual remarks taken as evidence of systematic failings.” Communism’s once never-ending fight to ferret out “capitalist roaders” has been succeeded in the voluntary soft Stalinism of academia by a never-ending fight against an increasingly elusive enemy.In America, Legutko notes, young people have shifted from the “pursuit of happiness,” which required delayed satisfaction with a plan as to how to move forward, to the momentary pursuit of pleasure. Their pursuits, as with “hooking up” in college, have become increasingly episodic. The upshot, he believes, is that divorce and abortion have become the outstanding achievements of the new political/cultural system. And in this regard, Legutko notes wryly, “Communism was far ahead of the liberal West.”In our culture, as under Communism, there are those who deserve “special protection and are therefore honored with special privileges.” Feminists, gays, and greens are esteemed as the prosthetic proletariat of America’s cultural Marxism. But there is at least one area in which America has taken the lead—what he calls “consciousness raising. ” The United States, writes Legutko, “was to my knowledge, the first liberal-democratic society to create and in some case impose such therapies on people with unruly minds designed to ferret out possible Tartuffes.”The social-justice warriors who have become powerful in the Democratic Party are skilled at playing a double game. They meld an epistemological skepticism with an enthusiasm for political dogmatism. “The peculiar combination of . . . merciless distrust and unwavering affirmation gives” them “an incomparable sense of moral self-confidence and intellectual self-righteousness.”After The Demon Democracy (sic -F.G.) was written in Polish in 2015, the double game played itself out in the case of Northwestern University feminist Laura Kipnis. In an article entitled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” Kipnis suggested that the over-extension of the Title 9 federal regulation barring discrimination in college sports threatened free speech. The overextension was, in part, the product of an Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter directed at the small army of campus bureaucrats charged with enforcing “diversity.” The letter strongly suggested that the campus bureaucrats should be on guard against any ideological deviations such as criticisms of political correctness.Sure enough, Kipnis was then investigated by the Federal Justice Department on suspicions that her critique of Title 9 enforcement was itself a violation of Title 9 “protections.” The Feds backed off after 72 months of investigation only because Kipnis went public with the official harassment and made it into a free-speech issue worthy of a reluctant press’s attention.Legutko’s ideal is the kind of tolerant pluralism he once admired in the West in general and America in particular. He sees religion—in Poland’s case, Catholicism—as the most important remaining barrier to the bulldozer of modernization that seeks to bury the Western tradition under the rubble of a bureaucratically imposed egalitarianism. But what Legutko fails to recognize is that in America, our shared belief in the principles outlined in the Constitution constitutes a formidable secular barrier to the relentless centralization of liberal democracy.And yet the displacement of a limited government enshrined in the Constitution with newly created abstract rights born of judicial and bureaucratic invention—think of the “right” to use a bathroom of one’s choice at any particular moment—is certainly giving us an unholy taste of the coercions and conformities once associated with Communism.

A disturbing scene unfolded at the White House on Monday afternoon. A hook-and-ladder firetruck and a utility bucket truck pulled up to the South Portico and extended their rescue arms in the vicinity of the Truman Balcony.Had the first lady finally decided to make a break for it?Ha! Good one, bitch. I wonder if Dana The Wonder Cow would have joked about Jackie Kennedy trying to get away from her husband's penis which smelled like Marilyn Monroe's abortion-ridden vagina?Did President Trump need to be talked off the ledge after his latest poll numbers? The real reason was every bit as fanciful: The Trump White House had invited the makers of the trucks — and manufacturers of all stripes — to bring their wares to Washington to show that Trump was making good on his promise to revive manufacturing jobs in America.This from the cow who slobbered all over The Community Organizer From The High-Yellow Lagoon for pouring trillions down the Democrass donor-hole known as "clean energy".The president admired baseball bats and golf clubs, tried on a Stetson, asserted that the representative from an Omaha beef producer “wanted to kiss me so badly,” gave a thumbs-up from the driver’s seat of the firetruck and admired a Sikorsky helicopter. “I have three of them,” this champion of the little guy reported. Trump, whose businesses fill hotel rooms with mostly imported goods and whose daughter manufactures her clothing line entirely overseas, proclaimed this “Made in America” week.That Trump would attempt to give the impression that he is leading a manufacturing revival makes sense: In the otherwise dismal new Washington Post-ABC poll, Trump’s handling of the economy is the only area in which he is viewed favorably by the public, by a narrow 43 percent to 41 percent.But if Americans were to discover Trump can’t make good on his promise to lead a resurgence in manufacturing jobs— then, well, it might be time for him to call in a five-alarm blaze and ride that hook-and-ladder into exile at Mar-a-Lago.The new poll finds that only 36 percent of the public approves of the job Trump is doing, the lowest at the six-month point in any presidency over the past 70 years, when modern polling began. Only 25 percent support him strongly. But, to paraphrase Trump’s remarks to the first lady of France, he is in such good shape — beautiful! — compared with where he would be if his supporters were to lose faith in his economic policies. Then, the bottom would drop out.Again, La Milbank believes that anyone who doesn't get invited to the same parties as she does is a dumbass who shouldn't be allowed to vote or answer pollster's questions...I pray that isn't true, but I haven't seen any AWUG backlash against The Great Orange Dope yet.I asked The Post’s polling chief, Scott Clement, to run a regression analysis testing how views of the economy shape overall support for Trump when other variables such as party are held constant. The result was powerful: People who approve of his handling of the economy are 40 or 50 percentage points more likely to approve of him overall. While views of the economy closely correlate with partisanship, this means, all things being equal, that Trump’s overall approval rating should drop four or five points for each 10-point drop in views of his economic performance. Because Trump supporters are largely unconcerned with his personal antics, economic woes — not the Russia scandal or zany tweets — are what would doom Trump in public opinion.The problem for Trump is many of his populist promises are starting to look fraudulent. Remember that Carrier plant in Indiana that Trump claimed to have saved? It’s reportedly beginning to lay off 600 people. The Boeing plant in South Carolina that Trump visited in February to showcase his fight for manufacturing jobs? Layoffs there, too. Trump denounced plans by Ford to move production of the Focus from Michigan to Mexico. Now Ford is moving the work to China instead.Surprise! Of course, this sort of thing goes unmentioned when the commies are in charge.As The Post’s Tory Newmyer reported, manufacturing employment hit a record low last month of 8.47 percent of overall employment. It has long been trending that way and is forecast to continue. Manufacturing wages rose less than the overall private sector.This isn’t primarily because taxes are forcing production overseas. It’s productivity: Manufacturers can produce twice as much in the United States as they did a few decades ago with a third fewer workers. Likewise, coal mining jobs aren’t leaving the country because of regulations, as Trump tells his supporters; the jobs have been lost to market forces in the form of cheap oil and gas.Golly, she seems to be on the brink of admitting that there are such things as market forces at work! She better be careful, the commies will be back before she knows it.The Congressional Budget Office, led by a Republican appointee, forecast last week that the economy would grow at just a 1.9 percent clip under Trump’s proposed budget, far less than the 3 percent the White House claims and the higher levels Trump alleges. The CBO also said the Trump budget would leave a $720 billion deficit in a decade, contrary to Trump claims.So what happens if — and when — Trump’s core backers discover that they’ve been had: They’re losing health-care coverage and other benefits, while manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back and a Trump-ignited trade war is hurting U.S. exports?He’ll need more than a hook and ladder to escape that disaster.

Meanwhile, number two on that list, Ruth Marcus, puts Orange Clump's mouthpiece's number in her Rolodex for a rainy, bloody day:

President Trump’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, seems to be an adherent of the just-yell-louder-school of legal argumentation. Sekulow has employed this tactic for decades, dating at least to his maiden outing before the Supreme Court in 1987, when American Lawyer magazine described Sekulow as “rude and aggressive.”And so it was on Sunday, when Sekulow completed his second “full Ginsburg,” a reference to William Ginsburg, the hapless lawyer for Monica Lewinsky who did his client no service by making the rounds of all the Sunday shows. Sekulow makes Ginsburg look like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.He combines bluster and obstreperousness (“I’m going to answer your question, I am, and you’re going to let me answer it,” he lectured/interrupted Fox News’s Chris Wallace”) with obfuscatory legal jargon (“I’m not in privity of contract, as we say, with the party that’s responsible for the actual payment of the bill.”)Sekulow compulsively redirects (“I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in,” he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl). He is internally inconsistent (“I mean, opposition research in campaigns happens all the time,” he told CBS’s John Dickerson, just after noting that Donald Trump Jr. had said that “if he had to do it all over again, there are things he would do differently.”)So watching a Sekulow performance, it is tempting simply to ask: Why is this man shouting?The better question is: What is this man shouting? Because if you turn down the volume and pay attention to what Sekulow is saying, you can deduce the disturbing outlines of where the president’s legal team may be heading. As Sekulow made the rounds Sunday, he signaled the expansion of the Trump team’s assault on former FBI director James B. Comey and, in turn, on the legitimacy of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. This is worrisome, because it lays the foundation for firing Mueller and/or issuing pardons and declaring, “Case closed.”Thus, when Wallace asked Sekulow whether the Trump team’s repeated denials of dealings with Russia were now “suspect,” it triggered this disquisition:“I think it’s important to put the framework here. How did we end up with a special counsel? Here’s how. … The FBI director at the time, James Comey, had a series of meetings with the president of the United States. In those meetings, he took notes. He put them on his government computer, put them in his government desk, and when he was terminated from [that] position, which you would acknowledge that the president had the authority to do, he gave them to a friend of his to leak to the press … to get a special counsel, and the special counsel is appointed.”In this retelling, Mueller is the fruit of the poisonous tree planted by Comey. Therefore, Mueller’s appointment is illegitimate and he should go — and with him the investigation.“So the basis upon which this entire special counsel investigation is taking place is based on what? Illegally leaked information that was a conversation of the president of the United States with the then-FBI director,” Sekulow told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “And that to me is problematic from the outset. And I think that raises very serious legal issues as to the scope and nature of what really can take place.”Does it? In his previous round of Sunday shows, Sekulow muddied the waters by claiming that Comey had violated attorney-client privilege in revealing his conversations with Trump. As Wallace explained Sunday, this assertion was incoherent, since Comey was not acting in any way as Trump’s lawyer.Sekulow’s pivot — to claiming that the conversations were protected by executive privilege — is scarcely more convincing. Perhaps Trump could have asserted privilege to bar Comey from testifying before Congress, especially before the firing. That’s different from asserting that Comey’s decision as a private citizen to reveal information about his conversations with the president was “illegal,” even if Comey proceeded through the distasteful cutout of a memo leaked by a friend. If such disclosures were against the law, every administration veteran who wrote a tell-all book would be in jail.Another strand of Sekulow’s argument involves the notion that the memo was essentially government property, not Comey’s to decide to convert to his own use, even if the information contained in it is unclassified. Irony alert: This argument requires concluding that Comey took something of value from the U.S. government, while asserting that the Trump campaign did not solicit anything of value from the Russian government. On the Lawfare blog, Timothy Edgar and Susan Hennessey assess the argument that Comey’s action violated the conversion statute as “cutout.”Even if it weren’t, what would be the relevance? Comey’s alleged crime wouldn’t make Mueller’s appointment void or voidable. A leak of classified information that is intended to trigger a criminal investigation doesn’t make the ensuing investigation improper.But watch that space. I suspect — and fear — that we haven’t heard the last of this bogus argument.

Ruthie is just kidding, you Clumpskyites. She knows the value of a good shyster when you're in a real pinch. How do think she beat all those solicitation raps in the 1930's?

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.